The present invention relates to vacuum treatment systems, and to a vacuum chamber.
EP-0 136 562 discloses a known vacuum treatment system with feeding devices, which are provided on the inner housing and are aligned with the provided treatment chambers and their openings. Radially driven, movable slides serve as driving devices, are mechanically frictionally, synchronously and with the same stroke driven by a central wedge-type drive.
It is a disadvantage in this known approach that it is not possible to design the feed differently for the various provided treatment chambers, as, for example, for meeting different sealing requirements. Furthermore, a respective provided slide must also be actuated when no treatment chamber at all is provided at the opening assigned to it, in that, for example, with the known system, in a flexible manner, a process is to be implemented which requires fewer treatment steps.
Even if, for example, one of the treatment chambers does not require a feeding movement of the workpiece against its opening, as, for example, a heating chamber, a feeding stroke is also carried out there on the known system.
Another major disadvantage of the known system is that the slide stroke movements are wedge-driven. Thus, the stroke is affected by wear. Consequently, workpiece carrier plates are lifted from the carousel against the respective openings and are sealingly placed there against the edge of the opening. Even if the stroke on the known system, as the result of wear, changes only a little, the desired sealing conditions also change, which is intolerable with certain difficult machining processes.